"There’s no success quite like failure"

From Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up:

"This is why other people are so helpful: They shock us out of our cognitive box. “I saw this happen all the time,” Dunbar says. “A scientist would be trying to describe their approach, and they’d be getting a little defensive, and then they’d get this quizzical look on their face. It was like they’d finally understood what was important.”

What turned out to be so important, of course, was the unexpected result, the experimental error that felt like a failure. The answer had been there all along — it was just obscured by the imperfect theory, rendered invisible by our small-minded brain. It’s not until we talk to a colleague or translate our idea into an analogy that we glimpse the meaning in our mistake. Bob Dylan, in other words, was right: There’s no success quite like failure."

"The people are the network"

I found this fantastic read that expands globally off of my previous "organization-charts-get-in-the-way" post. It is long, but well worth the read.

Mob Rules (The Law of Fives)

This is my favorite quote from the text:

“The net regards hierarchy as a failure, and routes around it.”

The summary is equally short and powerful:

"Still, there is one thing I can recommend: have courage and keep moving. Standing still is not an option."

"Continuous Partial Attention"

I have blogged about being a "knowledge worker" before, but just found another good slideshare resource about it thanks to a link by Jim S.

The funniest thing was on slide 25 where a knowledge worker is described as having "Continuous Partial Attention."

I love that description.

I work with several people who exhibit this trait and it is one the key characteristics, I think, that makes them successful in the workplace. To be sure, they are also criticized because their team-level focus seems to be lacking, however, this is made up for in the bigger benefit to the company. This is just another way to transcend team boundaries and have organization-wide impact.

And the reason it's funny is because it's true.